The Sojourning Spinner

The Setons

2012-02-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

I came across a recommendation on Ravelry for a series of books, the Scottish novels written by O. Douglas. The author has a droll way of sketching characters through dialogue. Here's a knitting-related excerpt, where a mother talks about her trouble getting a good nurse for her daughter:

They were all nice women, but somehow they just didn't suit. The first one had an awful memory. No, she didn't forget things, it was the other way. She was a good careful nurse, but she could say pages of poetry off by heart, and she did it through the night to soothe Phemie like. She would get Phemie all comfortable, and then she'd turn out the light, and sit down by the fire with her knitting, and begin something about 'The stag at eve had drunk its fill,' and so on and on and on. She meant well, but who would put up with that? D'you know, that stag was fair getting on Phemie's nerves, so we had to make an excuse and get her away.

-O. Douglas, The Setons, 1917

I could have picked a better excerpt, perhaps. There's the knitting that a woman takes to work on when she goes to Shakespeare readings. The stocking the heroine knits while the hero tries to court her and the stitch she drops when flustered. A down-to-earth mother who knits while her pretentious daughter does fancy work. The mother who copes with her son's enlistment by knitting socks and the "frenzy of knitting into which the women threw themselves, thankful to find something that would at least occupy their hands" in August, 1914.

Douglas dresses the heroine in "a soft blue homespun coat and skirt, and a hat of the same shade crushed down on her hair," but of course homespun is not necessarily the same as handspun and there is no mention of a spinning wheel in the house.

Many chapters of The Setons start with a quote from a Shakespearian comedy. Every so often in the narrative a Biblical phrase or allusion pops in, as with this description of a guest who is difficult to please, "You stay her with apples and she prattles of nectarines." Cats and sausage rolls appear in the story too. It's my sort of book, even if I did cry in places. I know it's commonplace to say this, but Ravelry is good for letting you run across interesting things.

Then there is this quote from Penny Plain: "It is wonderful how much news there is when people write every other day; if they wait for a month there is nothing that seems worth telling." A true thing, of correspondence and of blogs.

Eye of Partridge

2012-02-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

I am knitting socks–my first pair, so exciting–with some store-bought yarn, Kroy, so that I don't have to wait until I spin proper sock yarn to get the wool handknit socks whose fit everyone tells me will irrevocably and fundamentally change my life.

Why no, there is no peer pressure when knitters get together. Not a sausage.

I've started in on the heel flap. The stitch here is eye of partridge. I am pleased with the look and texture of the fabric. It takes four rows to make one repeat of the stitch. In the evening I did three repeats, enough to get the effect. In the morning I went and picked up the sock-in-progress just so I could admire the eye of partridge.

eye of partridge stitch, DyakCraft sock needles

I like the thickness of the fabric too, compared to the stockinette on the leg. It's meant to stand up to abrasion.

Long Lock, Short Lock

2012-02-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

I flicked some more Romney locks and discovered that some of them are longer than others. I rarely handle individual locks since I'm used to spinning top and the difference was interesting to note.

Lost Mitten Mountain Sculpture

2012-02-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

"Lost Mittens Become Art at Winterlude," CBC News, Feb 6, 2012 describes art by Karina Bergmans made with lost mittens. Winterlude is a festival in Ottawa-Gatineau.

Reasons for Owning Wool Combs and Hand Cards (Or Not)

2012-02-06T19:00:00.000-05:00

Early on when I took up handspinning, I was set on acquiring hand cards and wool combs so I could prepare fibre. I talked to experienced spinners about the options. I noted what brands and designs they use and recommend, and I tested as many as I could. I read books and window shopped for a while before taking the plunge. Even with all that, well, it's amazing my capacity to try before I buy and still not know until later if a tool is a keeper.

I've watched other handspinners go through the same careful shopping process. Hand cards and wool combs cost a fair bit. The action of carding and combing, the ergonomics of the particular design, and the resulting arrangement of fibre can match your taste or not. Hand cards and I still don't get along, and I greatly prefer the design of one of my sets of wool combs over the other.

I've noticed that the people who keep and like their hand cards and wool combs do so for a number of reasons. Here's the list. It might help you decide whether you have a practical reason to own cards and combs.

They keep fibre animals that produce enough fibre to process by hand but not enough to send to a custom mill. They want fibre that is not commonly commercially milled and stocked in stores, such as rare breed wool. They want a blend of fibres or a multi-colour blend they can't buy ready-made. They prefer to pick a fleece by judging the look of its intact locks, and they think commercially-blended roving or top has lost the character of the original. They enjoy the feel of spinning rolags from hand cards or sliver from wool combs. They spin woolen and worsted yarn with rolags and sliver respectively, yarn structures that cannot be obtained so well from commercial preparations. They interpret historical methods of handspinning as a job or hobby. They have been given unprocessed fibre for free.

That last reason pulls in beginner spinners. Tantalizing, to have fibre but be unable to spin it in its tangled state. If that's you, at this point how do you know you'll go for more after you finish processing the pile of free fiber? There are stop-gap options. Rent hand cards, combs, or a drum carder from your guild. Get by with a cat comb or dog comb, or a relatively inexpensive flicker sold by handspinning supply stores. Put the pile away and spin prepared roving and top for a while.

None of the stop-gap options would have swayed me. I could not be told. I suppose this blog post is sort of a message to my earlier self and to my future acquisitive self too.

Some Hampshire Wool, Spun

2012-02-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

This Hampshire wool I combed is as pleasant to spin as I expected. I've combed a third of what I have and decided that was enough to start spinning.

I spun it tighter than any yarn I've done to date in order to try and get hardwearing sock yarn qualities. I drafted as usual, then held the strand and spun the spindle for an extra count of twelve before winding on.

I aimed at 40 wpi and got a little thicker than that most of the time. I suppose the finished yarn will be thick as sock yarn goes. I don't actually know how sock yarn goes. Hardly any experience with sock yarn, myself, and even less with hand knit socks.

Flick Carding

2012-02-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

These scratches are from a mini doffer flicking Romney hogget locks held over a scrap of leather. (Don't know what flicking is? You flick a lock of wool to prepare the wool for spinning into yarn. You draw a comb or flick carder through one end of the lock while holding the other, then turn the lock around and draw the comb through the rest. Since the tines of the flicker can be scratchy and you hold the lock of wool on your leg, a scrap of leather protects your pants from being shredded. I don't have a flicker; I'm using a mini doffer tool instead.)

I'm not sure how I feel about flick carding yet as a way of preparing fiber. It feels more comfortable than carding with hand cards and wastes less than combing in my experience. Each short, crimpy lock goes from a tight squiggle to an airy mass. However, drafting from a lock and joining it with the next is tricky. I'm getting lumpy joins and an inconsistent gauge of singles overall.

I expect that if I were preparing longer locks, I could get a better handle on them and keep the strands aligned but I don't know.

Romney hogget lock at top left,
mini doffer tool at top right,
lock after flicking at bottom

Punctuated Equilibrium

2012-01-31T07:00:00.000-05:00

I buy things, thinking they will be useful for handspinning and then I don't use them because, as they are, they are useless. They need to change or I need to change, so they sit and wait for change to happen.

I combed some more Hampshire wool with Viking combs. As I unclamped the Indigo Hound pad, I realized that I could use it to support a toy wheel as I drove a dowel through with a hammer. The hardwood dowel and toy wheel are from Lee Valley Tools and they are a tight fit. I got a dozen of each.

Next I need to see about a hook to complete the drop spindle.

one hundred, forty-fourth skein

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-05:00

More of the rose red BFL I've spun before, hopefully spun the same weight though I didn't check. About one ounce and 88 yards. A product of mindless spinning that aspires someday to be weft.

Article on Caring for Items Made of Bone

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

I found it helpful to read Colleen Wilson's post, "What the Bones Know," on the Royal BC Museum blog, since I own some bone nalbinding needles. Wilson covers conservation considerations and she explains the structure of the material. She doesn't state whether the museum's new archeology display of bone objects will include fibre arts tools.

Speaking of nalbinding, I have messed around with the technique again. Haven't made any fabric worth showing yet and my grasp of the stitch is shaky but I joined ends and made a round with F2 connections, and I successfully spliced yarn. This is definitely progress. I had the opportunity to sit with an instructor and a group of people also trying out nalbinding. This time I'm using a hairy store-bought Icelandic singles yarn, Álafoss Lopi , and it's more suitable than the rug weft I tried last time.

How to Make an Old Believers Belt Tool for Tablet Weaving

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000-05:00

Below, I give directions for making a cloth beam for weaving belts using tablets or cards. I saw the design in Margaret Hixon's 1981 documentary film Old Believers (online at Folkstreams.net), which shows a weaver named Feodora Seledkova. She used it to secure the near end of the warp at her waist. It allows you to get a good warp-faced fabric by putting a lot of tension on the strands when beating the weft, yet it lets you relax the warp and turn the cards easily to change the shed.

For those of you who want to buy a cloth beam, not make or commission one, a different style of cloth beam is listed for sale on the Lacis website. It is called a backstrap horse bar, and it looks very similar to a drawing of an Algerian and Moroccan-style cloth beam in Peter Collingwood's The Techniques of Tablet Weaving. It should function just as well as this one.

You can use the information in this post, the dimensions, for personal and commercial purposes. Make a cloth beam, sell a cloth beam, commission your favourite woodworker to make you a cloth beam. Just don't pass off the design as your own or the wording of this blog post as your own. I have no idea who designed the tool, and I don't even know if I have interpreted the film image correctly. I paused the film, measured the image of the tool, and scaled it up using another object in the picture to guess at the size. I make no guarantees about your final product. All I can say is the reproductions I have of Seledkova's cloth beam work.

Here are two views of a cloth beam my father made for me. Click to see a larger photo. The wood would look prettier with more sanding but it works perfectly well like this.

You can see the cloth beam is made up of four pieces assembled together. The two long pieces measure 8 x 0.5 x 0.5 inches. The two short cross pieces measure 1 x 0.75 x 0.5 inches. The outer edges of the short pieces are placed 2.25 inches in from the end; this leaves a hole in the middle 2 inches in length. This placement gives the tool golden ratios (phi, Fibonacci series numbers) between measurements and makes it attractive.

This is what my father has to say about construction:

Use a good, straight grained hardwood, and ensure that it is the proper thickness. Cut it by ripping it into the required width, crosscut into the necessary lengths, and sand all the parts smooth. Then glue and clamp the cross bars to the long pieces. When dry, use an electric drill to drill and countersink for 1 1/2 inch #6 Robertson screws. Install the screws, then either round over all the edges using sandpaper, or use a roundover bit in a router. Finish sand.

This could be done using hand tools, including a rip saw. Alternatively, purchase already dimensioned pieces and assemble them yourself. Commercially-available dowels would work, although you'd need to carve the cross piece ends to match the long side piece of dowel. Not at all hard to do if you have a sharp knife. Should take just a few minutes per joint. The screws are the key to a solid tool.

I asked him for a way to avoid visible screws, so that the tool could be used by historical re-enactors without drawing attention to its modern construction.

If you can sink the screw heads deeply enough, it is possible to insert a wooden plug (purchased or home cut using a plug cutter), but these pieces of wood are quite small to allow the 3/8 inch plug hole. You can use the same wood or a contrasting wood for an interesting effect.

If I were trying to avoid screws at all costs, I'd just glue the two pieces together (using traditional Medieval epoxy glue for strength, because the end of the cross piece is end grain and end grain doesn't glue well) and then drill a hole through the side and into the cross piece and drive in a glued wooden pin....If you do try to insert pins into glued holes, the glue will fill the hole and the pin will not be able to be inserted (you cannot compress a liquid, as you know) unless you provide a small groove on the pins for the glue to come out.

Alternatively, a re-enactor could glue a strip of leather over top of the screws to hide them. As for whether the tool is authentic for a historical period, I can't tell you. The 1981 film shows an elderly weaver, Seledkova, a member of a traditional culture who says that she emigrated from Russia during the Russian Revolution to China, then to Brazil after China's 1949 revolution, then to Oregon. She says that she learned to weave belts before she left Russia and her people made belts when they were in China. If she learned to weave with the same style of cloth beam, the design could be a hundred years old or older. However, for all I know, the cloth beam's design could be only thirty years old and American in origin.

Please take all safety precautions when working with wood.

The best way to learn to use the cloth beam is to watch Seledkova in the film, though she doesn't set up the warp. I figured out how to do that by watching someone warp a rigid heddle loom and by reading books.

You may also be interested in my post, "How to Make Inexpensive Cards for Tablet Weaving."

How to Make Inexpensive Cards for Tablet Weaving

2012-01-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

I made a large stack of cards for tablet weaving. By supplying some labour, I got cards at a lower cost than buying pre-made cards from a weaving supply shop.

I took some decks of playing cards, the oversized kind, and with a paper cutter I trimmed an end off of each card to make each square. I rounded the corners with scissors. On the advice of a relative, I went to a printing shop and had the holes cut. I supplied the shop with a store-bought card for reference and I also made a template since the playing cards were larger. To make the template, I drew circles on one playing card by laying the store-bought card over top, matching its corner with the corner underneath, tracing inside the hole, then repeating this by moving the store-bought card to each corner.

If I'd used a hole punch, some of the holes would be misaligned and I would have gotten discouraged from the tediousness of the task. My dad tried using a drill press on a small stack of trimmings but the holes came out ragged.

Now I have enough cards to warp all one dozen of the Old Believer cloth beams my dad made.

Article about Hampshire Wool

2012-01-25T19:00:00.000-05:00

I overdid it when combing the Hampshire wool and tired myself out, and as a result that project is on hold right now. I'll pick it up again soon.

In the meantime, I read Deborah Pulliam's article, "Fiber Basics: Hampshire" in Spin•Off Spring 1998, p. 48-53, in which the author writes, "While not lustrous, Hampshire wool doesn't look flat and chalky as does the fleece of many other down breeds." I like wool with lustre best, so it makes sense that I chose Hampshire wool out of the assortment of down breeds I selected from.

I don't know if you do that, if you turn to books other people have written on your topic, in order to get inspiration to get a project going again. The article shows photos of sample yarns and swatches as well as helpful specifications for spinning Hampshire wool into sock yarn. You want a 45 degree angle of twist, apparently.

Wee Seamless Yoke Sweater

2012-01-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

I have knit a wee seamless yoke sweater out of leftover handspun. Got the small scale using fine yarn and using stitch counts meant for bulky yarn. Took the stitch counts from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns: Basic Designs in Multiple Sizes & Gauges. I figured out the number of rows by guesswork but otherwise conversion was simple.

This is the first time I've tried seamless yoke construction. I made the tiny sweater so I can use it for educational displays when my guild demonstrates handspinning for the public this spring.

Wearing Repairs on Your Sleeve

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

I read Hugh Dalton's Make Do and Mend, a reprinted pamphlet from the Second World War in Britain when clothing was rationed. Some of the recommendations are rather everyday but many take thrift and conservation to lengths that amaze me; for example, switching the sleeves on a sweater from one side to the other to even out wear.

There are all the ways to patch things that sound too far gone to me, and a lot of concern I can't relate to about preserving a certain foundation garment made with a scarce commodity, rubber.

There's cutting down, piecing together, and making alterations that surely must announce to the world that you'd gained weight or suffered a moth invasion.

Some tips are vague. I'm still not sure how the leg of an old woollen stocking becomes an infant sweater bound with ribbon.

It's fun to read about those items of clothing that are unfamiliar, such as golf stockings, a suit with tails, and plus-fours.

Combed Hampshire

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Have begun to comb the Hampshire wool I carried home in triumph from Qualicum Bay Fibre Works this past fall.

Down breed wool holds on to chaff and tends to be short stapled. After a number of passes with Viking combs, I have the longest wool of the lot, all in the best shape and almost completely free of bits. Decided to do it right and use the diz to get the wool off the combs in a uniform arrangement.

Lots more left to comb. The little yarn samples I spun look promising. The wool was exceptionally easy to draft, because combing makes the wool evenly distributed, alined, and the opposite of compacted.

Nice that this bout of fibre processing fulfills a number of my goals; for example, use un-dyed fibre, comb more fibre, and use stash.

Not Especially Useful, But It's Something

2012-01-18T07:00:00.000-05:00

Possible to Spin Using an Umbrella Swift

2012-01-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

I saw someone spinning cotton with the business end of a charka (the spindle and the posts that support it) driven by a band slipped over an umbrella swift clamped sideways and opened wide. The swift looked and acted like a rimless, Asian-style wheel. Brilliant bit of repurposing.

one hundred, forty-second and forty-third skeins

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

I spun four ounces of Jacob into these two skeins, which have about 90 yards each. I meant to knit my first socks with them but I'm told there isn't enough yardage.

A Horrible Sort of Logic

2012-01-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

I came across this:

With the rise of capital-intensive cotton farming in Telangana [India] over the last thirty years, two strange contradictions have arisen. First, the primary cash crop, cotton, continues to decline in value; yet, farmers continue to plant more of it. Why do the farmers not shift to other crops? Second, while the regional's overall growth in agricultural output has been robust–more than 4 percent per annum for many years–the incomes and consumption of most farmers have declined precipitously, and this manifests as farmers' suicides and support for the Naxals. The question now becomes: Why do farmers go into debt so as to plant a crop (cotton) for which the price is falling?

A brilliant young economic historian, Vamsi Vakulabharanam, has identified and explained the politics of this contradictory, seemingly nonsensical set of facts. The answer, he writes, lies in the credit system. The moneylenders demand that cotton be planted with their capital because cotton is inedible, so during times of crisis, producers cannot "steal," that is eat, it. Moneylenders essentially give advances on crops, then receive the harvest. If a farm family is dying of hunger and their crop is grain, chances are they will eat the collateral crop to stay alive, rather than give it to the moneylender. Cotton avoids this problem. Thus, even when food crops, like grains, command higher prices, they carry greater risks for the moneylenders. Cotton is the moneylenders' biological insurance; they steer farmers away from food crops, even if the potential for profits is higher, because only cotton is guaranteed collateral. Using this insight, Vakulabharanam shows that since 1980, farmers in Telangana have moved away from planting coarse grains, like jowar, barley, and millet, toward growing cotton, even as the price signal should have them doing the opposite.

–Christian Perenti, Tropic of Chaos (New York: Nation Books, 2011), p 146.

Hat Gone A-Roving No More

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

The one Christmas gift I made, the hat I mailed off at the start of December? I hear it finally arrived. I was worried there.

Finished the Tablet-woven Hearts

2012-01-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

The card weaving samples I showed you the other day are now finished and so is the accompanying writeup.

Experienced weavers have reviewed both and said the fabric and writeup are ready for submission to the guild newsletter.

Here's the writeup, the pattern if you will, the project notes or documentation.

I passed threads through holes in the corners of a 3 inch square piece of cardstock. The holes are marked clockwise A, B, C, and D. I used 20 cards. I alternately threaded cards Z and S; that is, one card had threads passing through from the left and the other from the right when viewed on the axis from above. The cards hold the shed open and you turn the cards to change the shed. I turned the pack of cards together, continually forward by quarter turns. After every quarter turn, I threw a pick. The far end of the warp was tied to a post and the near end fastened to a small cloth beam at my waist.

The fabric is warp-faced and warp-twined: the warp threads slant. The alternate Z and S threading creates small chevrons across the fabric (cards 1 & 2, 3 & 4, etc.). The contrasting accent colour shows the chevrons, hopefully appearing as tiny white hearts. I placed the white chevrons across the strap according to a Fibonacci number sequence: 3 pink chevrons, 1 white chevron, 2 pink, 1 white, 3 pink. I placed one white chevron at D and the other at C so you could see that for each card, a thread comes to the surface every four picks; that is, a complete turn of the card.

The fabric is thick and strong, useful for the strap of a bag. Done in fine silk with both white chevrons placed at D, this sort of weaving would make a nice bookmark.

A Past Resolution

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

Early this past October, I resolved that until New Year's I would make only one handspun gift and anything else I made would be something for myself, a skein spun for fun, or a practice piece for the purpose of learning a new skill I would later apply to making something for myself.

It was tough to come to that point, to realize that was what I really wanted. I had a goal of making a handspun gift for each member of my extended family. That was being achieved at the cost of my other goal of making handspun items for me to use. I kept excusing the situation, telling myself it didn't matter and that all goals are good so really they couldn't be working at cross purposes.

Right now I'm telling myself it doesn't matter that my fibre and tools have a messy overflow problem. Hmm.

Current List of Goals

2012-01-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

I keep a list of future possible projects and guiding principles around for reference. They change from time to time. Right now, this is the list:

comb a whole lot of Romney
focus on making lovely handspun stuff for me to use and wear, not for gifts
knit first pair of socks
learn sprang
learn to knit a sweater
learn to weave plain weave and to use a loom
make enough handspun clothes for an outfit
make small handspun shoulder bag
no more synthetic dyes (use up what dyed wool I have on hand)
spin and weave hooded jacket
spin flax
spin from stash to cull stash
spin the rest of the merino to get rid of it
stash enhancement: buy more BFL fibre! buy local!
take a risk and spin the good stuff; don't hold off out of fear, there is more good wool out there
use my wool combs more often because combed fibre is so very, very nice
use up stashed skeins of handspun yarn
weave linen into Ms and Os cloth

I look at that list and think, oh, that one I could almost scratch off but it's so good and I'll probably come back to it so I'll keep it around...I've got materials for this one which is a good start...I want to do this, that, and the other but I lack opportunity/role models/intestinal fortitude...which to do first...why am I doing that, it's not even on the list...that one won't happen for ages...maybe I should drop such-and-such a one...ah, I know exactly how I want that one to turn out and there's a risk it won't so I will brace myself to make lots of practice pieces until I get it right or I find I am actually pursuing a dead end.

The other thing I think is this: there is so much I don't know how to do yet and so much I haven't done. That is a cool thought. I like to learn.

I drove out one day in the Virginia countryside on a two-lane highway. A deer ran straight across the road and kept going. I'm used to deer on Vancouver Island. They're lightly built. They amble and dawdle, and they hold up traffic. This Virginia deer looked seriously motivated. I drove on toward to the shop, found it closed, and turned back. Two hunting dogs came up the bank, sniffed the deer's trail, and crossed when traffic cleared.

Not promising to go flat out like that deer but I do mean to make progress on the list.

Tablet-woven Hearts and New Belt Tools

2012-01-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

Happy Distaff Day!

I have been card (tablet) weaving four inch long samples for enclosure in a weaving guild newsletter. The jumbled pile in the photo shows two warps that started out about four metres long each. I have another warp to go.

The pieces are mostly pink with a repeated motif in off-white that is supposed to look like a heart. As I wrote in my observations of the Jerusalem Garter museum piece, when you thread alternately one card S and the other Z across the pack of cards you get little chevrons. The white chevrons stand out against the pink chevrons.

The cloth beam is new. My father looked at the cloth beam I'd had custom made for myself this past spring and he told me that by specifying the tool be made all in one piece, I had created spots where the grain of the wood could split. I took the specs from a tool used for making belts by a weaver named Feodora Seledkova in an old documentary film and I didn't give any thought to the woodgrain.

Made sense when he pointed it out, and was a bit of a concern given the amount of pull the tool has to stand up to. I secure the far end of the warp to an immovable object, tuck the cloth beam's closer prongs into a sash or belt loops at my waist, and lean back when beating down the warp to create the weft-faced cloth. At the last guild meeting, I tied the warp to a cart holding a stack of folding tables, the heaviest thing in the room. I forgot the cart was on wheels. A couple of friends were watching me weave and without telling me (until after) they leaned on the cart quite hard to counter my pull and keep the cart in place.

My dad made me a dozen new cloth beams with the grain of the middle pieces running perpendicular to the long pieces and Robertson screws holding the three pieces together. My dad would particularly like you to notice the Robertson screws, as they are very Canadian. Most of the cloth beams are made of maple from trees that grew on Vancouver Island and if memory serves the darker wood is local alder.

ETA: directions for making cloth beams are in a post here.

The Ox and Lamb Kept Time

2011-12-24T07:00:00.000-05:00

Sean Quigley, "Little Drummer Boy," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrNcD34KFhM.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/12/03/mb-sean-quigley-drummer-boy-video-111203.html

I am taking a little break and will resume posting on Distaff Day. The only posts that might go up between now and then will be about any skeins of handspun I finish.

Greensleeves

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

What wool is this, I laid to rest,
In plastic bags I’m keeping?
No name of sheep nor label sweet,
No shepherd’s business card either.
This, this is Rambouillet,
Or Manx Loghtan, or Polypay.
Ouissant, Bond, North Ronaldsay,
Not Icelandic, it isn’t that hairy.

Why lies it in a forgotten place,
Where beetle and moth are feeding?
Good spinner fear for lost projects here,
Fine intentions much too fleeting.
This, this is Corriedale,
CVM, or BFL,
Shetland, Finn, Jacob, Gotland,
Targhee, Polwarth, Merino.

(The song is a joke and bears no relation to my stash.)

Besides parodying a carol, I knit the wee sock ornament to completion. Pattern from Handspun, Handknit. The angle and length of the foot still look odd and I don't yet understand what would change that.

Out and About With a Spindle

2011-12-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

Out and about with a spindle and some Jacob roving.

Ear Warmer to Match Susie's Reading Mitts

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

Isn't the secret chocolate centre a nice touch? That's part of the handspun skein I showed in the previous post. Knit to go with the mitts in red Fleece Artist BFL handspun.

one hundred, forty-first skein

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

An ounce of naturally dark BFL wool roving from Breezy Meadows Farm, spun up into a 3 ply light fingering yarn.

Historic Banning Mills

2011-12-19T07:00:00.001-05:00

I stayed at the Lodges at Historic Banning Mills in Georgia. The location once had water-powered mills that ran a cotton gin and cotton spinning machines. Here is the shell of the spinning mill building:

This is one of the dams, now washed out after a flood. At the left there are two lines of stone wall; these are walls of a mill race that channeled water to the mills. It's now a walking path, and you walk through the lock that controlled water flow.

If I correctly caught the narration of the Banning Mills documentary, wool, not just cotton, was spun at this site with water power to make Confederate military uniforms. I posted once before, after reading Massey's Ersatz in the Confederacy, about the abrupt change in conditions in the American South during their civil war when there were trade embargoes and disruption of transportation lines. Local and regional production became important, and so did the power generation (or hand power), infrastructure and tools, know-how, labour, and supplies at hand. So different from today where these things are remote from our experience.

Here is a walking wheel that was found on the property. The spindle and leather bearings are missing. The spinning wheel is on display in the lodge, assembled with the wheel on the wrong side in order to fit on the mantlepiece.

In the gift shop you can buy a miniature bale of cotton for a souvenir.

There are trails in the woods and along the creek, with amphitheatres, picnic tables, and pavilions. At the main building there is a deck with rocking chairs. The weather was warm enough to be outside in comfort and I found some good spots in which to spin, knit, weave, and read fibre arts books.

I think Historic Banning Mills is a place with potential for knitting retreats. The only issue I could see handspinners, knitters, dyers, and weavers coming up against is the steep slope of the terrain. The slope is an asset for the scenic views and the zip lines where you zip through the tree canopy riding a pulley on a cable high off the ground. However, the stairs down to the creek and down to the conference rooms might be a barrier to access for some.

Two Degrees of Separation

2011-12-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

I like meeting people from Scandinavia. You show them your copy of The Warp-weighted Loom and they say, my mother has one of those (meaning the loom, not the book) in the garage.

How old is it, I ask.

Not old, maybe a hundred years is the reply.

Wow. In British Columbia a hundred years practically gets you a historical plaque.

I pull out my copy of Skowronski and Reddy's Sprang. Seen this? Like weaving leno except there's no weft and you keep lifting and crossing threads. No? Yeah, the fabric does look cool.

What about nalbinding? What is nalbinding, um, you use something like a darning needle and you make loops–oh, you did that and made mittens in school as a child. Norway must be a fantastic fibre arts place.

Spinning Some BFL Roving

2011-12-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine Articles

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

Matt Kirk, "Handmade Gear," Blue Ridge Outdoors, November 3, 2011, http://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com/outdoor-gear-reviews/experts-analysis/handmade-gear/.
Discusses the benefits of going further than reduce, reuse, recycle: raise, repair, and regionalize. The article may be about outdoor gear but as a handspinner I relate to much of what Kirk says about acquiring tools and learning to make and source useful local goods.

Jedd Ferris, "Natural Selection," Blue Ridge Outdoors, October 27, 2010, http://www.blueridgeoutdoors.com/special-sections/natural-selection/.
I would quibble about merino being the only wool that isn't itchy, but otherwise I like this profile on Jeremy Moon of Icebreaker and his non-synthetic technical performance apparel. Funny to think of someone discovering wool as a breakthrough product, but it's a good story.

I like the ethics information section on the Icebreaker site, regarding the way the fibre animals are treated. They have a mulseing-free guarantee for their products, which is good. So is their traceability. You type your piece's code into their site and see the sheep station(s) it came from. This website feature is fun even if you don't own their clothes; a demo code leads you to video and written interviews with one of the fibre producers.

Almost Knit a Wee Sock

2011-12-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

I pulled out sock needles, one of the scratchy down breed skeins I spun this summer, and my copy of the original Handspun, Handknit. I followed the sock ornament pattern all the way to the toe but didn't Kitchener because I didn't like the shape of the foot. I frogged it back to the leg. So, no photo. No first sock.

Merino and Supported Spindle

2011-12-13T07:00:00.000-05:00

I have taken up my barely-used supported Russian spindle again. It's working quite nicely now with combed merino (from Alberta) instead of Shetland. The merino fibres draft more easily; Shetland fibres grip each other.

I brought it along to the knit and natter. It was cool. A man and a woman were in the sandwich shop. They noticed me spinning and tried to get a better look without drawing attention. I think they might have been from India or somewhere in Asia where people spin with supported spindles.

Wrong Tool for the Job

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

Those Leicester Longwool locks, I tried processing a lock with a Strauch mini hand card cleaner, the cute little thing that looks like a tiny flicker and that can be used as a tree ornament. What an exercise in frustration. The lock is too long for short carding teeth, it needs wool combs. Not sure why I thought it would work, actually. I packed it to take along for an informal knit and natter with friends at a sandwich shop. You can't do that with wool combs. They'd throw you out.

Farmer Boy

2011-12-10T07:00:00.001-05:00

A friend mentioned that she finds inspiration in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, part of the autobiographical Little House on the Prairie series, because it contains descriptions of home textile production, such as weaving and shearing. Re-reading, I found it to be so. For a children's book, there is a fair bit of detail in the text too.

The breed of sheep is named (merino) and reasons given for why Wilder's father-in-law raised them and not Cotswolds (finer quality wool). The action of the loom is given (horizontal treadle), as well as the benefits of fulling cloth (warmth) and of sending wool to a commercial carding mill (cost-effectiveness). I'm not sure if the loom had an actual flying shuttle or if the shuttle flew back and forth.

For people who like to dye, there are descriptions the family dyeing skeins with natural dyes of roots and bark. In addition, there's a mention of colour blending using naturally-coloured wool with white wool. I would guess this was probably done by plying a strand of one with another or by holding two rolags together to spin a single. However, the blending by twisting is mentioned in the context of weaving so I'm not sure whether the blending was done at the spinning stage or weaving stage.

The only thing that isn't clearly identified is Wilder's mother-in-law's spinning wheel. All I could tell is that it must have been a treadle wheel not a walking wheel, since she "never sat down in the daytime, except at her spinning wheel or loom." The woman must have been industrious: "She knitted so fast that the needles got hot from rubbing together." And her work is given priority. The bedrooms might be cold in winter but her workroom has heat and good natural light to work by, storage shelves for yarn, and room for her floor loom and wheel.

The origin of the linen cloth the family uses is never given: they don't seem to have raised, processed, spun, or woven it.

Textiles and the steps of production are scattered all through the narrative, artfully imbedded in vignettes that show them as part of family life. The trick Wilder's husband plays during shearing, his envy over a cousin's store-bought, machine-woven hat with a clever new design. I know the series is American agitprop but it's still easy to take, the writing is so well done.

Leicester Longwool Locks

2011-12-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

At left, Leicester Longwool locks from Colonial Williamsburg's flock. (You might remember the sheep photo I posted last month.) At right is wool from a Shetland cross sheep. What a difference in lustre.

Construction

2011-12-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

A quote pulled from a CBC Radio North by Northwest interview with Laura Fry:

That's what keeps me coming back to the loom all the time. People say, "Well, don't you get bored?" and, no, because every time you change one little aspect of how you construct a textile, everything changes. You can fine tune your textile to be as perfect as possible for the function it is supposed to serve.

The full interview is here at the 8:10 mark: "Craft Fairs!" North by Northwest, November 12, 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/nxnw/2011/11/12/circle-craft/.

Ruffled Etta-inspired Wristlets

2011-12-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

Ruffled wristlets that convert to a corsage. There's a band of the lace pattern from the Etta hat pattern in there to tie it in with yesterday's hat. Had to do something with the leftover handspun from the Etta hat and the Navajo-plied skein meant for the Etta hat that didn't work out.

Etta hat

2011-12-06T07:00:00.000-05:00

Hurray, I have finished the Etta hat and can mail it off. Spun, knit, and blocked to show the lace. Christmas knitting, finished.

one hundred, fortieth skein

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Mohair from Salt Spring Island, 1 ounce, 66 yards.

Dexter, Sinister

2011-12-03T07:00:00.000-05:00

Judith MacKenzie's Gentle Art of Plying DVD says for knitting continental-style, spin to the left and ply to the right.

All this time, I've been doing it wrong!

Vicarious

2011-12-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

If you like to see photos of items made by other guilds and like to hear stories about their group endeavours, have a look at the Qualicum Weavers and Spinners Guild's post, "Annual Show and Sale November 2011," http://qualicumweaversandspinners.blogspot.com/2011/12/annual-show-and-sale-november-2011.html.

Fiddling While the Advent Candle Burns

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

Knit Me! Knit Me Now!

2011-11-30T07:00:00.000-05:00

Have wound the turquoise BFL. That's something.

Tomorrow is December.

The Sequel

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-05:00

Am knitting a band to warm my ears and match my Susie's Reading Mitts. Am amusing myself by calling it Susie's Audiobook.

Have run out of this handspun. I have a plan. Well, there are three options for finishing up this project but I know which one I want to take. For now, this goes into a project bag to wait.

Susie's Reading Mitts

2011-11-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

So pretty.

It's a rare knitting pattern that has sample photos I take to immediately, where I want to wear the finished product or incorporate a detail from it into something else. This is one of those patterns.

I didn't follow the pattern construction exactly but the essential details are there. My handspun yarn worked out very well.

ETA: I made a matching ear warmer band.

Finishing up a Hem My Own Way

2011-11-26T07:00:00.000-05:00

My Susie's Reading Mitts are nearing completion. One's waiting for a thumb, the other for its picot top to be folded over and its live stitches grafted to the inside surface. The pattern says bind off and sew. I'd rather not.

one hundred, thirty-ninth skein

2011-11-25T07:00:00.000-05:00

While every American woman I know was stuffing a turkey, I was stuffing lots of yarn onto a spindle. Fifty-six grams, 102 yards.

The one hundred, thirty-ninth skein was spun to match the one hundred, thirty-seventh. I am thankful to be done. This yarn is for the single Christmas gift I've committed to making. Considering when I started spinning and when the knitted hat needs to be mailed, my progress is slow.

Mohair Cloud

2011-11-24T07:00:00.001-05:00

one hundred, thirty-eighth skein

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-05:00

This is my first tweed yarn, and my first skein spun from a batt. The art batt was created by Gale's Art and contains "mostly wool with a little pink mohair and chunky felted bits in purple, yellow, and orange." 66 grams, 64 yards. The singles were spun around 16 wpi. I spun thick yarn because I wanted the large tweed bits to stay in.

At this time I am not sure what I will make this skein into but I'm pretty sure that a whatever it is will be meant for a small girl. Which one I'm not sure. I know several little girls and at least two of them adore pink.

The Bookstack Is Greener on the Other Side of the Fence

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-05:00

I applied and got a library card in a neighbouring library system. Why? Because their collection has some fibre arts books my system doesn't. I feel silly for going to these lengths but I feel sharp for getting what I want.

Also on the topic of libraries and opportunities, my system used to have Alice Starmore and Anne Matheson's Knitting from the British Islands. Now the catalogue no longer lists it. Someone, somewhere got to buy the discarded book for fifty cents and it wasn't me. A Starmore!* That Starmore!

I like one of the pattens in the book, despite two aspects that concern me. I don't know if I have the high level of understanding and stern degree of determination I would need in order to alter them to suit my taste. Cullercoats is written in a way that does not mesh with the way I like to read and understand patterns. Moreover, it is shaped in such a way as to make a person look lumpish and to bruit to the world that the wearer stopped paying attention to the fit of her clothes decades ago when dropped shoulders were cool. The book was published in 1983, so that's understandable.

The look of Cullercoats is a wee bit like Susie's Reading Mitts with thin lines of purl stitches at the cuffs. I am back to knitting on those mitts after revising my ideas about modifying the pattern. Good to be moving forward with a project.

*Her books, used, can sell for huge amounts of money. Fortunately I got a copy of this one for $20.

one hundred, thirty-seventh skein

2011-11-21T07:00:00.000-05:00

My one hundred, thirty-seventh skein. Singles spun to 32 wpi, three singles plied together. Ranges from about 14 wpi to 10 wpi, so it probably falls short of the worsted weight I was going for. 66 grams (a little over 2 ounces) and 114 yards. BFL wool dyed by Gale's Art in turquoise.

Tiny Castle Spinning Wheel

2011-11-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

Saw this tiny castle-style spinning wheel at the West End Antiques Mall, booth JWM, labeled "spinning wheel, as is." It's about one yard high, top to bottom. It must have been quite cute when it was new.

I have no idea what this part is for. I'm also not sure what the white finials are made from; I've never seen ornamentation like this before on a wheel.

I know from reading books that this bit of metal inset in the rim is meant to give the wheel more momentum than it would ordinarily get (being small), and thereby make it more efficient. I assume originally there were more pieces all around the wheel. You can see the footman behind the hub has split along the grain, damage that must have been inevitable given the nature of wood and the use this wheel probably saw. The treadle is in worn condition.

The flyer and bobbin are not set where they should be, which is understandable since one of the leather bearings is missing and therefore can't hold them anyway. But the function of the crosspiece they are set into is a bit of a mystery to me.

Working on Something Frivolous

2011-11-18T07:00:00.001-05:00

I've been working on something frivolous, a pair of arm warmers out of the Fleece Artist wool I spun recently. Uses the edging from Janelle Masters' Susie's Reading Mitts and combines it with the unshaped thumbless design of Leslie Friend's Toast.

Well, I was working on them. Now I'm procrastinating. I knit this far, started its mate, knit the same amount again, and stalled out on that one too. Something about them is bothering me. Perhaps there's not enough ease. Perhaps I don't want arm warmers as much as I thought.

Jerusalem Garter

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

Went to Colonial Williamsburg and saw the Jerusalem garter. It appears in chapter twelve of Peter Collingwood's Techniques of Tablet Weaving.

You can see a good photograph of it here http://www.history.org/history/museums/clothingexhibit/museum_accessories_timeline.cfm?section=acc1600_1700#12.

By examining the structure, I was able to see that when the piece was woven at least some of the cards must have alternated S and Z threading because there are small black chevrons in the warp-faced fabric at the borders. According to Collingwood, alternated S and Z threading is common practice and is done to prevent the narrow fabric from corkscrewing. Every so often the cards at the border were turned in reverse: you can see where the direction of the black chevrons changes in the photo below. However, in the centre of the band the outline of the large red arrow in the middle remains smooth. The centre would have been turned forward and reverse much more frequently to get double-weave.

The yarn is very fine silk.

doubleweave pattern down the centre: front and back
have the same pattern but the colours are reversed

Leicester Longwool Sheep

2011-11-16T07:00:00.000-05:00

Leicester Longwool sheep at Colonial Williamsburg.

Doukhobor Discovery Centre

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-05:00

Went to the Kootenay Doukhobor Historical Society's Doukhobor Discovery Centre in Castlegar, B.C., Canada in search of exhibited tools and textiles. Found them.

The Doukhobor are a people group that immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1899. For decades they lived communally and met almost all of their own textile needs themselves. I find it impressive what they got done.

This is a long blog post. I will start out with some clothes, go on to fibre arts tools for processing, spinning, and weaving, and then finish with examples of woven textiles.

First, something not strictly a textile: a sheepskin coat. If you remember your Canadian post-Confederation history, Laurier's Minister of the Interior Clifford Sifton went against public expectation that settlers in the Prairie provinces would preferably come from Britain and places like it. If they could do agriculture, they were in. He said, "I think that a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half-dozen children, is good quality."

I'm guessing that the sheepskin coat came from an early period, as later the community adopted vegetarianism right down to their shoes. There are quite a few pairs of shoes made of cordage on display. There's a slip-on pair that is very coarse and bristly. This pair is made with particularly fine materials.

Here's a spinning wheel. There are several, and they looked very similar to each other. Note that the maiden supporting the orifice is considerably thicker than the other maiden, a design I hadn't seen before. Burnham's Unlike the Lilies: Doukhobor Textile Traditions in Canada states that the community received gifts of spinning wheels from the Quakers and the Canadian Council of Women. I suppose this could account for the uniformity of design. Burnham believes the gifts of wheels explain why there is rare evidence (one photograph and one memory from interviewees) for the use of hand spindles.

I found a spindle on display.

weft beater, spindle, tool for pressing linen

Here are fibre preparation and weaving tools: paddle combs bottom left and at top, bobbins, flax comb-type distaffs and matching small combs, boat shuttles, hand cards, and pulleys from a loom. I think the proportions and the curve detail on the flax combs in the middle are beautiful, and I really wish these were commercially available. Want to know how much? Earlier this year I gave information about flax combs and distaffs to three different professional fibre arts tool makers in hopes they would consider adding these items to their line. Every other tool on the table you can get new. I know this makes sense given how many people weave and comb and card wool compared to how few work with flax, but the heart knows no reason.

The long stem of the flax distaff fits into the same sort of board that supports paddle combs for wool, holding the fibre at convenient height first to comb the fibre out then to draw the fibre off for spinning.

Board and post supporting paddle combs set in distaff position

There are two looms on display, a horizontal loom with treadles and an upright tapestry loom. The rough construction is interesting. Makes you feel like anyone who's handy enough could have a loom, not just folks with hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy one. See how the shafts are made of bowed wood. See how a metal bracket braces the top corner of the tapestry loom. Also of note, at the right side of the horizontal loom on the floor is another board for holding combs or distaffs, one that I think has nicer lines than the one in the photo above.

Did you notice, on the tableful of tools, that underneath was a linen tablecloth? There are handspun handwoven linen cloths everywhere in the museum. The rug on the wall is one of many as well, and there are not only weft-faced tapestry rugs but pile rugs.

Hemp camel bags, probably purchased in Russia

drum carder

Blanket Mill Reopened

2011-11-14T07:00:00.000-05:00

"Neighborhood Revival," NBC Nightly News, Nov 6, 2011

A news story about the reopened Faribault Woolen Mill Co in Faribault, Minnesota. Nothing to do with handspinning, but does have to do with domestic production of woolly goods and preservation of tools and skills.

According to the report, the factory equipment would have been exported to Pakistan if investors hadn't bought it. The equipment is extensive. Along with looms, the video shows industrial wool carders. You can see their yarn spinning machines at rest on the company's promotional video on Vimeo here,

About The Mill from Faribault Woolen Mill Co. on Vimeo.

and in motion on another news report embedded in the mill's blog.

There are good still shots and captions that show processing on their equipment in the "Lost Art of Wool" slideshow at http://faribaultwoolenmills.com/wool.php. The mill's website states it is "one of the only mills left in our country fully integrated to produce product from start to finish under one roof."

The report underscores the importance of retaining skilled workers with experience and listening to old timers. The new owners acknowledge they are depending on former employees, one of which is past retirement age.

Maplelea Girls Dolls

2011-11-12T07:00:00.000-05:00

According to the product description, you get pages explaining how yarn is made when you buy the Close Knit casual fall outfit (item KT40) for the Maplelea Girls doll Taryn. The tie-in is that Taryn cares about the environment and repurposed yarn to embellish her clothes.

The doll company, Avonlea Traditions, used to make Anne of Green Gables dolls. The Maplelea Girls dolls are 18 inches, and their concept is similar to American Girl dolls only with all contemporary themes rather than historic ones. And Canadian themes.

Another doll, Saila, has some accessories that are made in the province of Nunavut, such as the Pang hat and the Amazing Amauti. The amauti is "made according to traditional design" and the shape looks much like Inuit clothing I once saw in a museum exhibit.

ETA: if you found this post using search words for this type of doll, you might enjoy my post about the handspun, handknit hats I made for a friend's daughters' dolls.

one hundred, thirty-sixth skein

2011-11-11T07:00:00.000-05:00

Here's an example of a skein that I didn't see coming. My first experiment in Navajo plying failed to make the yarn I was hoping to get.

I planned to make a slouchy hat with large sections of stockinette interrupted by knitted lace, with long colour repeats. Because the roving had short stretches of colour, the skein's repeats are short. This would obscure the lace. Back to the drawing board.

I need to find a use for this skein someday. It is one ounce of worsted weight BFL yarn in the Velvet Elvis colourway from Gale's Art.

As for Navajo plying, I'm sure it has its uses but I wasn't crazy about doing the technique. At least I can say I've tried it.

Home Weaving

2011-11-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

I picked up a book published in 1939 by the Department of Agriculture, Quebec, Home Weaving. It has many delights: erratic spelling, quaint views on asbestos, dimensional drawings of a loom and squirrel cage swift, curious instructions to use hand cards like paddle combs, beavers mentioned in a list of fibre animals, the success story of Mme deRepentigny's Montreal workshop in the 1700s, stats on the revived home handspinning industry. Four million pounds of native wool were spun annually in Quebec farmhouses at the time of publication. That's a lot.

The authors expected weavers to spin novelty yarn rather than purchase it, as it would be easier, but to send cloth out to country mills for finishing, as the price was so reasonable. Must have been an interesting time to live, if that was the case.

Home Weaving contains recipes for bleaching wool with sulphur, hydrogen peroxide, hydrochloric acid, potassium carbonate, and ammonia. It outlines considerations, such as which makes poisonous gas (sulphur) and which reduces dye uptake afterward (sulphur again). Amazing that the provincial government considered this part of home industry. The dawn of better living through chemistry and all that. Or possibly this was traditional cottage industry practice. I read in Alice Starmore and Anne Matheson's Knitting from the British Islands that Shetland knitters bleached their shawls over sulphur smoke.

I had a chance to buy some natural light Romney hogget from Qualicum Bay Fibre Works and passed it up. I was so used to perfectly bleached wool. I don't like to wear off-white and I worried that the wool would have a homemade, blotchy look when spun. Someone else at the trunk show bought some to spin on the spot. I half-regretted my choice when I realized that once the locks were carded up, the colour looked better and more homogenized. Often I fail to make the leap of knowing what a fibre will look like when spun.

Spun Sample of IGOR

2011-11-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

I spun samples of a teased lock of hogget wool to get an idea of the yarn I can get from it. The wool is undyed IGOR (Island Grown Organic Romney, the island being Vancouver Island, B.C.), purchased from Qualicum Bay Fibre Works, a custom mill. If I read the label correctly, the sheep's name was Dewey.

Suitability of yarn depends on its end use so when I pick I need to consider that as much as what's pretty.

Let's set end use aside for a minute, because my mind shies away from pinning down exactly what I want to do with the wool. I got four pounds of IGOR hogget plus another pound of conventional island-grown Romney hogget. Have never bought anywhere near this much of any one fibre before. With this and an additional five pounds of white Hampshire cross, I probably doubled my wool on hand. I'm somewhere between "whoa" and "now we're getting somewhere."

I think the thick sample looks nice.

When I bought the Hampshire cross (not shown), Anna Runnings brought out a selection of down breeds for me to choose from. If memory serves they were Dorset, Dorset cross, Clun Forest, Suffolk, and Suffolk crossed with Rambouillet. All locally raised. All pre-washed, a feature I love.

When I've bought from shepherds I've gotten fewer wool breeds to select from. When I've bought from a store-front or online supply shop I've paid more per pound.

ruler, for scale

Katharine Jolda's Cyclocarder™

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-05:00

A hand-cranked wool carder converted to bicycle power by Katharine Jolda. According to the video, she finds it more comfortable and efficient to operate the carder by turning pedals. Video is "Cyclocarder: Katharine Jolda" by Maker Faire, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSmSVI87zI4.

There are table-top sized carders that can be hooked up to a motor run on solar power (or regular current for that matter) but this is a much more direct way to use alternative energy.

It's also a way to repurpose used equipment, such as bike frames, rather than cause the manufacture of new materials such as photovoltaic panels.

Must work very well for promotion and awareness-raising at public events: it's so eye-catching and unusual.

Jolda sells Cyclocarder™ plans and kits on the Fibershed marketplace website.

Entwined Mittens

2011-11-07T07:00:00.000-05:00

Entwined mittens. Pattern by Tera Johnson, modified to go full-length and to put purls up the centre of the cable. Five-strand yarn is the secret sauce for the deep cables. I made just enough yarn to finish, too.

one hundred, thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth skeins

2011-11-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

The remainder of the Fleece Artist Blue Face Leicester wool, 132 yards and 37 grams, 114 yards and 40 grams, which means one is spun a little thicker than the other. Three ply.

The original roving had some very dark red splotches which I liked. They look diluted now that the wool is spun up. Pity that got lost.

Salt Spring Island Weavers & Spinners Guild 2011 Guild Sale

2011-11-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

I got to see the Salt Spring Island Weavers & Spinners Guild's 2011 guild sale. This is a show and sale of finished goods.

There was much more in the way of woven goods for sale than knitted items. Am not sure whether this is indicative of a strong weaving focus in the guild or if this means weaving is more viable for making items for sale.

I enjoyed reading the labels on the goods. Some, and not just the skeins for sale, said handspun. Some did not say handspun but said local yarn from local sheep. Presumably the yarn was milled by machine at the island's local custom fibre mill, the Gulf Islands Spinning Mill. I'm sorry now that I didn't verify this. Family members were waiting outside for me to finish looking so I didn't linger to chat with any of the guild members manning the sale.

You may find it interesting to go the guild's website and read the pdf that gives the standards all items have to meet to qualify for exhibition and sale. The link is under the News tab, in April 2011's note about guild sale preparation. Always good to know where the bar is set, even when making things for fun and not entering them in an exhibition or competition. Even when looking to make something wildly non-conformist and outside the rules, hah! Neatness comes up more than once in the list. Some of the criteria are straightforward, such as "tension should be even," and some could launch a year of study, such as "appropriate weave structure for intended use" or "smooth yarns should be consistent in size, twist, and ply."

The guild states in the publication that for the sale, "we encourage the use of natural fibres and, where appropriate, fibres produced on Salt Spring Island."

Salt Spring Island is an island accessible by ferry from Vancouver Island. It has been an agricultural producing region for a very long time, that is, long as far as European settlement goes on Canada's West Coast. The island is known for its lamb. There are small stands with honour boxes at farm gates where you can leave money and take produce. There are sheep at a private farm within the boundaries of Ruckle Provincial Park. I took a photo of the Ruckle family's flock in front of a picturesque Victorian house there but it came out blurry so this other photo will have to do.

plain blue mittens

2011-11-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

Frost on the ground, new handspun mittens in the coat pockets. Knit from Blue Face Leicester wool from Gale's Art, my light fingering-weight (i.e. fine gauge) one hundred twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh skeins.

A Peek Inside Maiwa Supply's Bricks and Mortar Store

2011-11-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

Here's a peek inside Maiwa Supply at Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Natural and synthetic dyes, fibre arts books, fibre, yarn, and such.

Computer-controlled Loom at the Silk Weaving Studio

2011-11-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

At the Silk Weaving Studio on Granville Island I saw a weaver operate a computer-controlled loom. She treadled once and that action advanced the pattern programmed into the laptop and set in motion whatever heddles were supposed to rise or fall and create the shed. Throwing picks and beating the shed were still controlled by hand.

The yarn was very fine and dyed in many subtle shades. The warp was very long; the weaver said that quite a few different scarves would come from it.

Looms at Leola's Studio

2011-10-31T07:00:00.000-04:00

I visited Leola's Studio in Whippletree Junction near Duncan, British Columbia, Canada.

table loom, warping mill

Leola herself

Here is Leola Witt-McNie at one of her looms. She kindly let me weave part of a chevron twill dish towel on another loom when I said, "I'm a tourist and I would like to try weaving."

I concentrated. I treadled 1, 2, 3, 4 over and over. I left what I hoped were consistent amounts of slack in the warp and beat in carefully. I re-discovered shoulder muscles.

Then Leola wove. The treadles went 4, 3, 2, 1, reversing the chevron of the twill. The eye, Leola said. She put it at the centre of the towel.

Leola suggested I take a photo of her Cowichan sweater to post because Americans might not know what one was. Authentic Cowichan sweaters are made by First Nations knitters in a place very close to Leola's location. If Vancouver Island has distinctive, locally-produced, commercially-available clothing, this is it.

more looms than you could shake a lease stick at!

one hundred, thirty-third skein

2011-10-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

This skein is a repeat of a yarn I've spun before where five strands are plied together in order to create a structure good for knitting cables. Blue Face Leicester wool, undyed, possibly spun too thin for me to finish the first Entwined mitten properly and knit another to match. We shall see. Two and a half ounces, 107 yards or so.

100 Mile Suit blog

2011-10-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

Here's an blog link, http://100-milesuit.blogspot.com/. I think it's interesting first, because they made a suit almost entirely within a hundred miles and second, because the blog records correspondence between the suppliers, craftsmen, and organizer. You hear ideas in their own voices and get a sense of the process.

Coordination of the work seems to have been as much of an accomplishment as production of the suit was.

A Vest at Nanoose Edibles Farm

2011-10-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

This is Barbara Ebell of Nanoose Edibles Farm. Do you see the vest she is wearing? It is made of local wool. Before she and her husband bought their farm and started raising vegetables, fruit, and chickens, the owners before them kept sheep. One of the members of that family handspun and handknit the vest for Ebell out of the home flock's wool.

This makes me happy, to see wool with history and a sense of place, to see clothing that doesn't have thousands of miles under its belt.

Nanoose Edibles Farm is located on Vancouver Island in Nanoose Bay, B.C., Canada. Note, the vest is part of Ebell's personal wardrobe, not her product line. She sells organic food.

one hundred, thirtieth, thirty-first, and thirty-second skeins

2011-10-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

A skein of rose red BFL from Gale's Art, a skein of natural Wensleydale probably from Louet, and a skein of BFL from Fleece Artist in an un-named red. All fresh off the niddy noddy, though only the Fleece Artist skein is fresh off the spindle.

Fibre Flax Seed at Richters Herbs

2011-10-19T07:00:00.000-04:00

I talked to a Canadian handspinner about flax and found that Richters Herbs in Goodwood, Ontario sells fibre flax seeds by mail. The variety is called Evelin.

You might remember I purchased fibre flax seed this past spring and gave away small amounts to people I expected were likely to grow it for the experience and possibly save the seed from year to year. Myself, I didn't have a twenty by twenty foot patch of ground to sow. According to the seller's directions that was the minimum space needed to grow enough flax for a handspinner to work with.

Directions on the Richters website say the minimum area needed is twenty square feet or two square meters. If I remember my elementary school math correctly, that is about a five by five foot patch. This is a considerably smaller and more manageable-sounding proposition.

I have heard back from two of the people who grew seed. One had a lovely large fresh green bundle of stalks that she brought in to show our guild. Her bundle was about a double handful in size. Another used her flax stalks, grown in a pot, as part of a workshop to teach people about flax.

one hundred, twenty-ninth skein

2011-10-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

Paddle to the Sea

2011-10-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

I am watching the National Film Board of Canada piece Paddle to the Sea–a film I saw many times in school–and am admiring the boys' sweaters in it. (In a hurry? Skip to the 4:20 and 20:00 minute marks.)

Pesky Fish

2011-09-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

I'm hanging out the "gone fishing" sign again because I'm going to be busy for the next month or so. There may be a few posts but nothing with any sort of regularity. Happy spinning in the meantime!

one hundred, twenty-eighth skein

2011-09-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

The skein of local, unseparated Icelandic wool came out softer than expected for such a hairy fibre.

Another Flawed Cable

2011-09-19T07:00:00.000-04:00

You may recall I was trying to extend Entwined mitts into full-length mittens. I reworked a new ending and wound up with something that looked like a cross between an electrical outlet and a startled face.

I didn't realize at first what I'd done and I couldn't figure out why I had an aversion to knitting the end closed. I let the thing sit for over a week.

I felt much better when I ripped out the section and ended the cables at a different place.

Slow as Snails

2011-09-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

Can you see the slight halo of wool fuzz around the mitten? Love that.

Normally I wait until both mittens are done to post about them. However, one mitten is all I've got right now and I'm simply happy to have the ends woven in. I worked out the stitch count, increases, and decreases as I went along in order to suit my handspun and get the fit I want, and that's why it hasn't been a straightforward project.

Sheep Mutiny

2011-09-16T07:00:00.000-04:00

Another old account of shepherding on Vancouver Island, this time with mutiny:

A green truck was waiting at the wharf with its motor running.

"Sorry, can't help you," the farmer explained. "Got pigs expecting."

He took my money, opened the tailgate, and the next moment I was alone, waist-deep in woolly gray creatures. Their bulbous eyes seemed to glare at me. For an instant I had the feeling I was surrounded by hostile Indians. "We're going to be good friends, aren't we?" I coaxed, vastly relieved to see that they had no horns....

A hundred yards from Wallace [island near Salt Spring Island, B.C.], a tail got caught in the propeller shaft. The motor stopped as a horrible bellow of pain pierced the air. Then the revolt was on. In blind panic, the beasts broke from their ropes. Snorting, kicking, trampling each other, they began bounding over the side. One wide-eyed creature charged at me. I went over backward, arms flailing, with the grace of a circus clown. The next thing I knew, I was pawing the water while the sheep raced toward shore.

David Conover, Once Upon an Island (New York: Crown Publishers, 1967) p. 169, 170

Acorns for Ewes' Feed

2011-09-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

I'd heard of fattening pigs on acorns. Apparently sheep will thrive on them too.

I was especially partial to the Garry Oaks....At Fair-Winds [near Victoria, B.C.] there were some magnificent specimens. In the fall their acorn-laden limbs would come alive with hordes of wild- band-tailed pigeons. These fall flights made me feel that I was reliving the era of the famous passenger pigeons in the East.

The acorns that did not go into their crops, fell to find a ready lodging with the sheep who fattened on the high protein kernels. In fact this gain in flesh just at the breeding season resulted in astonishing crops of lambs. The heavier the acorn crop, the higher the percentage of twin lambs we could look forward to the following spring.

–W. Phillip Keller, Canada's Wild Glory (Toronto: Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd., 1961) p. 101

No Cigar

2011-09-14T07:00:00.000-04:00

I went looking for commercial BFL yarn in a shop, found it, and left it there. It was very pretty, ready to be knit into a sweater, a heavier weight than I want, and four times the cost of the same wool top unspun.

Going into a yarn shop is a weird and awkward exercise for me, as I learned to spin yarn before I learned to knit and with rare exceptions I have knit pretty much only handspun. The owners tried to make me feel better by saying everyone experiences ambivalence and hesitation over the purchase of a sweater's worth of yarn.

Speaking of unfamiliar shops and seeing yarn in a whole new way, I recently discovered that embroidery shops sell cards of yarn in various shades of colour. I was prepared to see skeins of floss but there were these wee cards each holding several yards of angora yarn, several yards of alpaca yarn, and so on. Also there was a wall of wool yarn in various colours tied in skeins that looked meager to me.

My perspective has evidently been warped by casual exposure to friends' garbage sacks full of alpaca fleeces, tubs full of angora hair, pounds upon pounds of wool locks, and vats of dyestuffs.

Demo Booth

2011-09-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

This photo represents three hours spent spinning yarn with frequent stops to teach a few children how to spin, answer questions from adults, and point out features of our educational display of handspun, hand dyed, and handknit items. We had a good-looking booth with a loaned tent and table and we had multiple spinning wheels going. Once or twice we had more interested people than could get in the booth. It was an outdoor market and, fortunately for attendance, the weather was perfect.

Yarn Like Pot Noodles

2011-09-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

By repeated trial and error, I worked out the correct knitting needles and number of stitches to use to make mittens with my blue BFL handspun. Irritating, that all that work had to be ripped out.

Village Life

2011-09-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

Two quotes to warm the cockles of your hearts and make you long for the good old days:

All the children's knitting supplies have been made for them by adults of the community: wool sheared from sheep on the farm and spun into yarn at the mill or by hand, double-pointed needles in sets of five made by the cooper, and baskets handwoven by the village basket maker...

-Susan Strawn Bailey, "Knitting in the Amanas," Piecework, Sept/Oct 2997, p. 18.

and

On the main street of most small country towns, you can start with a list that includes mouse-traps, odd bits of hardware, a nut to fit this bolt, knitting wool, the groceries, a pair of jeans, a call at the bank, a note to see the lawyer, and at the end of two blocks it's done. Then, well satisfied, you can pop into a tearoom and have a coffee with a home-baked biscuit and strawberry jam.

-Midge Ellis Keeble, Tottering in My Garden: A Gardener's Memoir (Camden East, ON: Camden House, 1989), p. 65.

On the other hand, leaving the village and sourcing from anywhere and everywhere certainly gets you a wider selection of goods and services.

Description of Wool Carbonization

2011-09-09T07:00:00.000-04:00

The article "From Sheep to Shop" includes a thorough description of wool carbonization, the treatment of wool during large-scale commercial processing to remove chaff.

According to the article carbonization puts wool through a dilute sulphuric acid solution, baking, crushing, neutralizing, washing with soda ash and soap, and bleaching with hydrogen peroxide. The article is at http://www.woolipedia.com/fromsheeptoshop.html.

To avoid carbonized wool, you buy wool at the raw or scoured stage, or buy prepared wool from a company that uses other methods of coping. For example, rollers can crush chaff, or the miller can accept only fleeces from clean pastures and/or sheep that wear coats.

I am contemplating a wool purchase and I'm giving some thought to these considerations. BFL top is so wonderfully, consistently white and free of bits. Scoured wool that I buy and then comb will mean a fair bit of effort to source and to comb. It might yield streaky wool with bits I have to remove while spinning. On the other hand, it might be softer and more lustrous.

Would Make a Good Screensaver

2011-09-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

I went online window shopping and found a product image I wish I had for a screensaver: http://www.britishwool.com/images/scoureds/bfl.jpg.

Muddy Roots of Fine Linen Article

2011-09-07T07:00:00.000-04:00

If you head over to the Wall Street Journal, wsj.com, there's an informative August 3, 2011 article called "The Muddy Roots of Fine Linen" that switches back and forth between high fashion linen cloth and flax as a crop. The article reports that the price of cotton, which doubled last year, has gone back to the previous price for this harvest.

Speaking of linen, I recently used a ratty linen tea towel to wipe window cleaner off of a couple of windows. I will in the future only use linen cloth to clean windows whenever I possibly can. Worked so well. Glad I "wasted" linen on the glass instead of hunting for the old cotton cloths I usually use.

This spring and summer, my love of linen cloth led me to accumulate a pile of linen clothes from jumble sales and thrift shops. I plan to cut them up and sew some useful things, eventually.

Stahlstown Flax Scutching Festival

2011-09-06T04:00:00.000-04:00

If you are in Stahlstown, PA this weekend, go see the flax scutching festival. They have a good video of the festival here, "Stalhstown Flax Scutching Festival," http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IRMvC1eDxo. In the video are clips in random order that show steps in flax processing such as drying flax above a fire, mangling cloth, weaving, scutching, and breaking.

Right

2011-09-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

So after last week of pointing out everything that wasn't right, I get to report about something that is. It's odd saying that about an incomplete project; I haven't knit the top of the modified Entwined mitten yet or the thumb. Other than that, I am very pleased with it. I worked out a new and pretty ending to the cable that I was fussing with.

I like everything about the mitten.

The little dart I inserted above the cuff at the base of the hand is elegant; it makes the mitten fitted.

The weight of the yarn feels substantial. The shine of Blue Face Leicester wool is beautiful to look at.

The un-dyed fibre feels soft and better than dyed fibre. Un-dyed fibre in cables looks correct, traditional, and untrammelled.

The cables in 5 ply yarn stand out in such high relief that to my mind they put all lesser cables to shame.

Stockinette in 5 ply yarn is more plush than in 3 ply. I knit already with the other skein of this handspun when I made the Take It or Leaf It cowl; the embossed exchange motif meant that there were no large, unbroken swaths of stockinette to admire. Now, with this mitten, the whole palm is stockinette and I can tell.

I am starting to dream of doing a large item in stockinette with 5 ply yarn, with total disregard for the challenge it would be both to wrangle five singles into yarn that many times and to get a fabric thin enough and cool enough to wear indoors or under a coat. I think five ply yarn is supposed to have an air pocket inside with the five strands around it, making it lighter and better for insulation compared to the same size of 3 ply.

My First Cables, Redone But Still Not Like I Want Them

2011-09-03T07:00:00.052-04:00

I have redone the cabled mitten, correcting the fabric gauge. Now it fits and feels flexible.

The pattern is Tera Johnson's Entwined fingerless mitts. I like my fingertips covered so I am knitting on beyond the pattern. I did some figuring, crossed cables behind to make them disappear, and brought the remaining cables to a logical conclusion.

However, now that I am looking at the result, I find myself annoyed that those two cables cross behind and not in front like the others. I believe I will go back one repeat, knit the cables as written, and let them blend directly into stockinette above. Will look blunt but will look better.

I am not versed in the way cables are supposed to look. Cables have always simply been there on sweaters, and all the cable motifs I've ever been around have been pretty ordinary and not elaborate or tapered the way Kate Gilbert's Wisteria or Margaret Mills' Maire Riding Jacket are.

I know my choice of handspun yarn is good. Five strands of singles plied together really do make cables stand out. I am almost out; I am going to have to spin more in order to make a second mitten. A terrible thing, eh, to need to spin more yarn?

Noticed that almost all my posts this week have been about mistakes I've made and things that haven't worked out. Sorry to keep pointing them out.

Yarn Judged on a Spindle

2011-09-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

I find myself amused by a Coombs fair competition category: yarn on a spindle. I asked the local handspinning group and yes, the yarn is submitted for judging while on the spindle.

Would you have a competitive advantage if you used a really pretty spindle? What if the spindle had cutouts in the whorl and you used fibre that transitioned from one colour to another creating a pattern in the cutouts?

I don't see how a judge can assess yarn's consistency when the only part that's visible is the last few yards wrapped on the outside of the cop.

My (Much Too Tightly Knit) First Cables

2011-09-01T07:00:00.016-04:00

I present to you my first knitted cables. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to pull them out. The cables are done properly; my knitting is much too tight.

Tog and Thel Together

2011-08-31T07:00:00.007-04:00

Well, if the merino from yesterday was like handling tissue paper, this unseparated* Icelandic wool was like 30 lb bond.

It sits, untouched, because it came out differently than I intended and came out unsuitable to the purpose I'd picked for it. These things will happen. I spun it into strands that are too thin to have any loft or softness.

*Icelandic is dual-coated, so if the tog is not separated from the thel the results are hairy.

Combing and Salvaging Merino

2011-08-30T07:00:00.024-04:00

Yesterday I told you Targhee wool has too little luster to suit my taste. You may be wondering why I'm showing you a box of combed merino wool today since it has even less.

I bought the wool a couple of years ago before coming to grips with my predilection, before realizing how much a glossy sheen is necessary to my happiness.

I also didn't know at the time how much I prefer to spin well-prepared, lofty fibre without noils or sections that resist drafting. When I bought this merino, the roving was the very opposite. The seller told me so and showed me a sample of the rustic yarn the roving would make. I said, oh, that's fine, and bought a pound because while I was informed my powers of discrimination were as yet unformed. My fault and a forgivable one.

Now I have combed the merino. I'd been meaning to do so for ages and it's good to have gotten that task off the "to do" list. I feel like I've salvaged the purchase.

Sixty-one grams, or just over two ounces remain. The matte texture remains. The waste might be good for stuffing. The combed wool is definitely going in the category of "wool with which to make gifts for family" not "wool for selfish knitting." The preparation is good, the wool is fine, and only the longest fibres are left. This combination would lend itself to an experiment in spinning extremely fine gauge yarn if I want.

The colour is a natural brown and the wool was probably raised in Alberta, both plusses in my book. Natural colour in general, I mean, not this particular shade of warm brown. I can see other people going crazy for it. Me, I like natural wool colours in the clear grey range.